Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2026-27 Women’s Champions League

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In this week’s football-language podcast, we look at some of the language connected with the latest round of the Women’s Champions League. We will also look at some predictions from the Nations League, including the match between Germany and Greece. You can read the transcript below, read some teaching tips on how to use these materials, check out our glossary here, or browse all our previous posts and podcasts. For Teachers ▸ how to use this episode in class

Pre-listening: Ask students what teams they know that play in the Women’s Champions League: see how many out of the 18 in the league phase they can get.

Listening for gist (main idea): Choose the section where Damian talks about the Nations League and ask the students to write down all the countries that he mentions. Then listen again and ask the students to take notes. From their notes are they able to tell each other what has happened (build their knowledge).

Listening for details: Choose a section and delete some key phrases; ask students first to guess what the words are; then students listen to check their guesses and catch the key terms.

Share with other teachers how you are using these resources (vocabulary, listening, writing, etc.) on our teachers’ forum page

Hello

You’re listening to the Learn English Through Football Podcast.

DB: Hi there everyone. How are you? We hope you are well. My name is Damon, and I am one half of the Learn English through Football team – the other half is Damian. Damian is based in London, while I’m in Japan. Over here the J1 League, the top division, is 8 games in to their season, which is the first time they have started in summer, mirroring the European seasons. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch a few matches over winter. Now, like in Europe it is an international break for the Japanese clubs, but Japan has only played friendlies – they chalked up two wins though: 3-1 against Uruguay and 2-1 against Venezuela. Meanwhile in Europe there is some real action in the Nation’s League.

Damian, how are you doing and what do think so far after two rounds of matches in the Nations League? Any surprise results or particularly standout matches?

DF: Hi Damon and hello to all the listeners. I am usually based in London but this weekend I am on a flying (or quick) visit to Ireland to see some family. Ireland have done okay in the Nations League so far with a win and draw and in that 2-2 draw against Austria we saw one of the greatest ever Irish goals when striker Troy Parrott dribbled through the Austrian defence (including a nutmeg) before slotting the ball through the keeper’s legs to score! Amazing!

England and Spain played out a great game last weekend – the World Cup holders Spain eventually ran out 3-2 winners and then both sides followed that game with two easy wins each. England thrashed Croatia 7-0 – this was the biggest ever defeat in the Croats history so really disappointing for them but a wonderful performance for the English side. Some of the words to describe this victory in the media the next day included: demolish – England demolished Croatia; they took them apart. Ruthless – England didn’t hold back in their win; they were ruthless in front of goal – they didn’t miss any of their chances and in fact, they kept trying to score more. 

The Nations League, yes, has been interesting – and not just because we don’t have any club football going on at the moment! There are lots of new high-profile international managers, including Jurgen Klopp at Germany, Barcelona legend Xavi is now in charge of the Dutch side; Zinadine Zidane is in charge of the French team, while Jorge Jesus has taken over the Portuguese side and he’s already caused a stir by dropping Ronaldo to the bench! 

Stinger: You are listening to the Learn English through football podcast (in Japanese)

Today’s Show

DF: Yes, you are listening to the Learn English through football podcast, or as we were known before, ‘Languagecaster’ and that message was in Japanese. We’d love it if you could send us a similar message (or stinger) that says, ‘you are listening to the Learn English through football podcast’ in any language that you wish! It would be great to get more voices for the show.

Now on today’s show, we going to spotlight two matches from the last round in the 2026-27 Women’s Champions League league stage. And as we talk about the action from the matches, we’ll introduce some football language used to describe them. After that we’ll take a look back at our predictions from last week. The games we looked at were: Portugal v Norway and Gibraltar v Andorra. And we’ll finish up with another Nations League match in our predictions section.

Stinger: You are listening to Languagecaster.com (the Learn English through football podcast) (in Mongolian)

Football Language: Women’s Champions League

DB: Thanks for that message, which was in Mongolian.  There are 18 teams competing in the league stage, and some of them have famous men’s teams, like Arsenal, Real Madrid, Inter and so on, while others are probably less well known, like BK Häcken FF from Sweden and HB Køge Women who are from Denmark.

Each team has played two matches, so it is still early stages, and we’ll start with Manchester City v Real Madrid.

(to) Salvage a Draw: Manchester City v Real Madrid

DF: So, the first phrase we will look at is ‘to salvage a draw‘ or ‘salvage a point‘. Using the verb ‘salvage’ suggests that the team may have either had some luck in scoring the equaliser or that their goal came very late. They saved themselves from a loss. When a team ‘earns a point‘ it is slightly different from ‘salvaging a point’. To earn a point suggests that the team has worked hard and deserved their point.

In the Manchester City v Real Madrid match, City, the home side, salvaged a point when they equalised in the second half with a goal from ‘Bunny’ Shaw. Until then, Real Madrid had looked comfortable and more likely to score another after going ahead 1-0 in the first half. Because Manchester City had drawn their opening fixture a loss here would have been a very bad start to their Champions League campaign, so the equaliser was very important and it salvaged a point for the English team; it saved them from losing the game and getting no points.

Here is an example from ESPN with the phrase: ‘Manchester City needed a Khadija “Bunny” Shaw equaliser to salvage a 1-1 draw against Real Madrid in the Women’s Champions League.’

(to) Round the Goalkeeper: Paris FC v Arsenal

DB: The next phrase is ‘to round the goalkeeper’ and this was used by the BBC in their Paris FC v Arsenal match report: ‘In the 71st minute, one of Paris’ counter-attacks finally resulted in a goal, as Mateo ran the length of Arsenal’s half uncontested, rounded Misa and finished into an empty net.

To round the keeper means to take the ball around the goalkeeper, to go around the goalkeeper. The goal described in the BBC report was Paris FC’s first and made the score 2-1. A miscommunication between the Arsenal keeper, Misa, and the defence led to an equaliser for the French side. 

Predictions Review

Listen to our previous podcast on the language of predictions here.

DF: Right, let’s take a look at how we did on our predictions last week. We looked at Norway v Portugal and Gibraltar v Andorra from the Nations League – that last one was a battle of the minnows!

We were both wrong on the first match. I went for a home 2-1 win for Norway, while Damon guessed it would be a draw. We also mentioned Ronaldo vs Haaland, but as we said earlier Ronaldo didn’t even feature on the bench in this game! The result was a 1-0 win for Portugal, so we did pretty badly on this game for predictions.

We also got it wrong on the Gibraltar versus Andorra match. We both went for a win for the Gibraltar team, but it ended up in the League D game as a draw. So, all in all, our predictions were pretty bad last week!

I wonder, can we do better this week? 

Predictions: Greece v Germany

DF: We have just one match from the Nations League this week. Greece hosting Germany and will be hoping to continue their good form, including their shock win against the Germans in Germany last week. Damon, what do you think?

DB: I’m going to go for revenge for Germany and a first win for their new manager Jurgen Klopp. Maybe playing away will take a bit of the pressure off the German side, so I’ll go for a 1-0 away win. Damian?

DF: A tricky one to predict because the Greek side are playing really well – maybe a 1-1 draw for me. 

DF: Can you do better than us with your predictions? I think after last week maybe you can! What do you think might happen in this week’s Nations League games?

Stinger: You are listening to the Learn English through Football Podcast (Uzbek)

Language Review

DF: Thanks for that message which was in Uzbek. Right, we’re coming to the end of the show, so let’s remind ourselves of the two key phrases we looked at today. We had ‘to salvage a draw’ which means to save a point and also ‘to round the goalkeeper’ which is when a player dribbles round the keeper to score a goal. Try and use these phrases or listen out for them in commentary when you watch football this week. Maybe you can translate them into another language that you know?

Contact

DB: And remember listener, if you have any comments or questions for us, you can drop us an email at [email protected]. And don’t forget, you can also follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram and YouTube. And we would love to hear from you.

Goodbye

DF: Yes, we would indeed. Right, that’s it for this week. We’ll see you all again next week with our Weekly Football Phrase, which focuses on a phrase connected with the football at the weekend. Until then, bye bye.

DB: Ta-ra!

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